EDWARD MORGAN
Executed and hung in Chains at Glamorgan, 6th of April, 1757, for murdering a Family and burning down their House
THE circumstances which came out on the trial of Edward Morgan, at the assizes of Glamorgan, were these. According to annual custom he had been invited by Mr Rees Morgan, of Lanvabon, his cousin, to spend the Christmas holidays. He had partaken of the first day's festivity, and retired to bed along with a young man, apprentice to Mr Rees Morgan. No sooner had he laid his head upon the pillow, to use his own expression, than the devil whispered to him to get up and murder the whole family, and he determined to obey.
He first made an attempt on the apprentice, his bedfellow, but he struggled so far as to effect his escape and hide himself. The murderer then provided himself with a knife, which he sharpened on a stone as deliberately as the butcher uses his steel.
Thus prepared, he softly crept to the bedchamber of his host and hostess, and cut their throats in their sleep; then he proceeded to the bed of their beautiful daughter, with whom the monster had but an hour before been sporting and playing, and with equal expedition, and by the same means, robbed her of life.
Not, however, satisfied with causing this inundation of blood, he seized a firebrand and proceeded to the barn and outhouses, setting fire to them all; and to complete the sum of his crime he fired the dwelling-house, after plundering it of some articles.
The Gloucester Journal of the year 1757 describes the property consumed by fire on this melancholy occasion to have been "the dwelling-house, a barn full of corn, a beast-house with twelve head of cattle in it; and the farmer, his wife and daughter were either murdered or perished in the flames."
It was at first conjectured that the unfortunate people had perished in the conflagration. Their murdered bodies, it is too true, were consumed to ashes; but the manner of their death was proved partly by what the concealed apprentice overheard, but chiefly from the murderer's own confession. Morgan was executed at Glamorgan, on the 6th of April, 1757.